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Biocatalysts win Queen’s award for Enterprise

May 15, 2019

Welsh company Biocatalysts Ltd has won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation.

Biocatalysts Ltd is an innovative global biotechnology company that has been producing speciality enzymes for a variety of industries for over 35 years. This prestigious award is in recognition of Biocatalysts’ drive and enlightened approach to providing the best enzyme solutions to their customers. From thousands of applicants, Biocatalysts is just one of 201 companies to receive this highly coveted award. This award recognises the innovative products, processes and service that they supply worldwide.

Biocatalysts pride themselves on providing in depth technical knowledge and superb customer service. It does this by using the best technologies available and keeping abreast of the newest advancements impacting the biotech industry. In 2010, Biocatalysts recognised it could use these developments to fundamentally change the process of how novel enzymes were discovered, developed and manufactured. The company’s aim was to provide a service that would identify, develop and commercialise an enzyme within months at a cost that was accessible to all.

Biocatalysts invested in both people and equipment, and within 5 years had developed a process that included a bespoke software system, MetXtra, which is capable of screening millions of sequences to identify new enzymes in a few hours. This has reduced the early stages of enzyme discovery from years to a few weeks and enabled the supply of laboratory grade enzyme samples to customers for as little as £1000. These enzymes can then be developed and scaled up within months instead of a few years, meaning companies can access enzymes in realistic time frames, giving them the opportunity to promptly produce new products in response to market trends.

Rod Sears-Black, Biocatalysts’ Managing Director, commented:

“We are very proud to receive the Queen’s award for Innovation. It recognises the dedication and commitment of the Biocatalysts team to create this unique offering to the market”.

Biocatalysts is a company that is continually looking at how to improve its offering. The largest and most recent investment to date being a £6 million extension, housing a new 10m3 fermenter, high tech mini fermenters and downstream processing. This will increase the company’s fermentation capacity more than 10-fold and considerably reduce development time, ensuring that Biocatalysts keeps its commitment to exceeding customers enzyme expectations.